The private payroll Company ADP reported their monthly jobs numbers this morning, a day before the official numbers are released, showing an increase of 133,000 for May. April’s number was 113,000 so it was a modest increase. However, recent months have shown a clear slowdown of the pace of job creation. Also, out this morning was the weekly unemployment claims revealing an increase of 10,000 to 383,000.

The weakness is not a return to recessionary levels and in fact they are still showing an economy that is growing jobs but at a snail’s pace. GDP for the second quarter was revised downward to 1.9% from 2.2% as expected but it too provides a picture of a very slow recovery in our economy. The jobs produced in May does nothing to put back to work the 8,000,000 jobs lost in the recession.

Tomorrow a rash of data will be released including the official job data. Maybe we will see stronger numbers but I think that is wishful thinking. Still, our economy is growing and jobs are being created which is much better than what we see in many parts of Europe.